The College Student Inventory (CSI) of the
Noel-Levitz Retention Management System is a measurement
tool that asks students to reflect on academic, personal,
and social experiences and perspectives. The University of
North Dakota administered the CSI Form B to incoming freshmen
during the summer orientation since 2002 for three consecutive
years. The overall number of freshmen who participated in
this survey have been: 1,722 in 2002, 1,998 in 2003, and
1,687 in 2004. Freshmen provide their cognitive and affective
attrition indicators through the survey. There are three CSI
reports produced by Noel-Levitz. The first report is for
each individual student,
second for each student’s academic advisor, and, the
third is an overall institutional report.

CSI contains 100 Likert-type items. Each
item uses a Likert scale of 1 to 7 with 1 equaling “Not
At All True” and with 7 meaning “Completely True”.
Principal component factor extraction with Varimax rotations
was used to simplify the resulting factor structures along
with maximizing the loadings. In order to be accepted in
the rotated matrix, each factor required an eigenvalue greater
than one for the determination of the common factors. This
process yielded seventeen orthogonal factors. Factor scores
were generated for these 17 variables and were converted
to a standard score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation
of 10. Student responses to these items are therefore summarized
within 17 different scales. To check the internal
consistency and to determine the reliability of the 100 items
as a group and each of the subscales, Cronbach’s alpha
was calculated. The scales include: 1) Study Habits, 2) Intellectual
Interests, 3) Verbal Confidence, 4) Math and Science Confidence,
5) Desire to Finish College, 6) Attitude Toward Educators,
7) Sociability, 8) Family Emotional Support, 9) Opinion Tolerance,
10) Career Closure, 11) Sense of Financial Security, 12)
Academic Assistance (receptivity), 13) Personal Counseling
(receptivity), 14) Social Enrichment (receptivity), 15) Career
Counseling (receptivity), 16) Financial Guidance (receptivity),
and 17) Internal Validity.

These 17 factors are then organized generally
under three categories: Academic Motivation, General Coping
Skills, and Receptivity to Support Services. The CSI also
weighs the above scales to construct four compound scales,
each designed to summarize any given student’s Academic
Motivation: 1) Dropout Proneness, 2) Predicted Academic Difficulty,
3) Educational Stress, and 4) Receptivity to Institutional
Help. The focus in this study will be on the first scale:
Dropout Proneness. The Dropout Proneness scale is designed
to measure a student’s overall inclination to drop
out of college before completing a degree. The students included
on the list of “Students with High Dropout Proneness” as
part of Summary and Planning Report are those with percentile
scores on dropout proneness of 65 or higher.

Based
on the overall motivational assessment results, UND
respondents are below the national norm for dropout proneness,
predicted
academic difficulty, educational stress, and receptivity
to institutional help. This suggests that our freshman
students are less likely to drop out, have academic difficulties,
experience educational stress, or ask for institutional
help.